College Of Commerce / Centers & Institutes

Center for Strategy, Execution, and Valuation

The Center for Strategy, Execution, and Valuation is a center of excellence for thought leadership in Strategy and Strategy Execution.  The Center provides an engagement platform for thought leaders, business leaders and our Kellstadt Graduate School of Business community for co-creating and sharing leading practices in strategy and strategy execution.   The Center was founded in 2004 based on a foundation of intensive global research on high performance companies.    The 2004 article in the Harvard Business Review  “Give My Regrets to Wall Street” by Dr. Mark Frigo and Joel Litman and the continuing leading-edge research on high performance companies published in Strategic Finance and other leading business journals are just a few examples of the thought leadership research coming from our Center and the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business (which has been ranked in the Top 10 part-time MBA programs by US News and World Report).

Driven: Business Strategy, Human Actions and the Creation of Wealth
The publication of the landmark book by Frigo and Litman, DRIVEN: Business Strategy, Human Actions and the Creation of Wealth has received acclaim by CEOs, board members and thought leaders in academia (see www.returndriven.com and www.markfrigo.com).  Authored by Dr. Mark L. Frigo and Joel Litman. DRIVEN is about RETURN DRIVEN STRATEGY, a framework for business analysis and planning. It has been built on a simple theme: If we can better understand how the success or failure of a business is driven by its plans and actions, then we can greatly improve how we value companies and how we run our businesses.  The framework is the culmination of a major project to study and categorize the root causes of thousands of businesses that have succeeded, failed, or remained in mediocrity, over 20-30 year time periods of performance history. DRIVEN includes explanations, diagnostics, and case studies from the research. Chapters are arranged in the same order as the elements of the Return Driven Strategy framework, making DRIVEN both an interesting read and a valuable guide for ongoing reference. Our keynotes and executive education programs on DRIVEN have been presented to thousands of executives and entrepreneurs in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information on DRIVEN keynotes and programs, please contact: centersev@depaul.edu

Strategic Risk Management Lab - Thought Leadership in Risk Management and Corporate Governance
The Strategic Risk Management Lab was established in 2008 based on requests from business leaders and our Kellstadt community for understanding how risk management could be strengthened in organization to avoid the significant shareholder value destruction caused by flawed business strategies and unethical business conduct.  We were able to leverage our extensive research and applications of Return Driven Strategy to understand how high performance companies managed risk while driving growth and profitability.   The Strategic Risk Management Lab offers executive roundtables, executive workshops and conferences for executives and board members, and on-going, collaborative research in the Enterprise Risk Management areas. The lab incorporates the leading practices in corporate governance and risk management from the Return Driven Strategy Initiative. The initiative focuses on best practices from high performance companies for aligning corporate governance and risk management with the first tenet of Return Driven Strategy, "to ethically maximize shareholder wealth".  

Ground-breaking research in aligning strategy and risk management is on-going at The Center and the Strategic Risk Management Lab.  The cover article in the May 2007 issue of Strategic Finance “Strategic Risk Management: Creating and Protecting Value” by Dr. Mark L. Frigo and Dr. Mark Beasley (COSO board member and Director of the ERM Initiative at North Carolina State University);  the January 2008 article in Strategic Finance authored by Dr. Frigo “When Strategy and ERM Meet” ; the May 2009 article in Strategic Finance “Co-Creating Strategic Risk-Return Management”  by Dr. Mark Frigo and Dr. Venkat Ramaswamy (University of Michigan Ross School of Business), the December 2009 Strategic Finance article “Strategic Risk Assessment: A First Step for Improving Risk Management and Governance” by Dr. Mark Frigo and Richard J. Anderson are the basis for workshops for board members and executive team on strategic risk assessment and strategic risk management as part of effective ERM.   In 2010, Strategic Risk Management: A Primer for Directors and Management Teams was published by Dr. Mark Frigo and Richard J. Anderson.

We conduct executive seminars and workshops on Strategic Risk Management and Strategic Risk Assessment for board members, senior executives and management teams. In his role as director of the Center and the Lab, Dr. Mark Frigo provides oversight to the research initiatives. The center is currently researching leading practices for strategic risk management and innovation strategy. The center approach to research is to create thoughtful learning partnerships with corporations. 
 
For more information about our offerings please contact centersev@depaul.edu or visit Dr. Frigo's website at www.markfrigo.com